THE Senate on Monday adopted Senate Joint Resolution 23-6, which approves the hiring of an additional staff member for the CNMI Department of Labor’s administrative hearing office.
The CNMI Constitution allows the Legislature to authorize the government to incur personnel expenditures in excess of the fiscal year budget.
All the eight senators present voted to adopt S.J.R. 23-6. Sen. Paul A. Manglona was excused while Senate Vice President Donald Manglona, Sens. Celina Babauta, Jude U. Hofschneider, Dennis Mendiola and Karl King-Nabors attended the session via video call from Tinian.
Authored by Senate President Edith Deleon Guerrero, the joint resolution stated that the Labor secretary had requested for three full-time employees for the administrative hearing office, including an administrative staffer, but Public Law 23-9 or the Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriation Act provided for two hearing officers only.
S.J.R. 23-6 will allow DOL to hire an administrative staff member, “which is a critical position, and necessary for the hearing office to be able to satisfy its statutory mandate to provide labor administrative hearing services.”
The joint resolution stated that DOL’s administrative hearing office receives, hears and adjudicates all labor, agency, and denial cases including appeals under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation programs.
The administrative staff member for the DOL hearing office “is a critical employee that assists the hearing officers in managing the office, organizing the cases, scheduling hearings, filing records, and generally maintaining the office while hearing officers adjudicate the labor cases,” the joint resolution stated.
When “the hearing office is unable to hear or adjudicate labor, agency or denial cases due to the lack of administrative staff, the number of labor cases will pile up and the parties to the cases will be in limbo pending the adjudication for their case,” the joint resolution added.
The joint resolution also stated that the government’s FY 2024 budget “provides adequate funding…to hire an additional staff member but it does not provide for the additional [employee].”
